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Sh. Saleem Al-Hilali: As salamu alykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh, With you is your brother Abu Fajr ‘Abd al-Fattah as-Somaali al-Kanadi. Hope you are well by the Will of Allah. Many questions have come about the one who works in the field of accounting and he audits the accounts of certain companies, informs them of their annual statements and takes a fee for the auditing. Is this work permissible knowing that the accountant may come across interest based transactions of the company during his audit of the accounts? Does this enter into the hadith “Allah cursed the one who writes down riba, and its two witnesses”, since the accountant needs to write the data for the accounts? The Shaykh responded with: Walaykum as-salam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh, This issue is from the contemporary issues that many ask about these days, and the answer to it requires some detail, because accounting work differs according to the nature of the work itself, and according to the accountants role in the prohibited transaction. The origin is that accounting work itself - such as maintaining accounts, preparing balance sheets, auditing assets, organizing financial data - is permissible, because it falls under administrative and accounting dealings that people are in need of. However, the problem arises if his work is directly connected to usury, or assisting in it. It has been authentically reported in Sahih Muslim that the Prophet ﷺ said “Allah has cursed the one who consumes usury, the one who gives it, the one who records it, and the one who witnesses it”, and he said: “they are all the same”. So the one who records usury, is included in the warning, because he assists in forbidden contracts and he acknowledges it. For this reason, the contemporary people of knowledge have stated that accountants fall into different categories: If his work is limited to general permissible accounting, such as auditing accounts, preparing general reports, calculating profits and losses, organizing ordinary records, and he is not directly involved in writing, organizing, or approving usury based contracts, then the origin for it is permissibility. Even if he comes across prohibited transactions of the company during his work, because merely coming across it is not participation. Many companies have some prohibited dealings, while their main business is permissible. General accounting work does not necessitate that he enters under ‘the recorder of usury’ that is intended in the hadith. As for if his work involves direct usury based dealings themselves, such as: Drafting usury based loan contracts, Recording and calculating interest payments for collection, Managing bank interest schedules Is part of a department specializing in usury based financing, Assisting in preparing and documenting usury based agreements Then this falls under directly assisting in usury, and it is feared that he enters into the hadith “the one who writes down usury”. Due to this, the scholars differentiated between: Someone who works in a general job in a company that has some violations And between someone whose actual work is built upon serving, documenting and facilitating prohibited transactions Likewise, the core business of the company is also considered. If the core business of the company is prohibited, such as an interest based bank, a gambling or alcohol business, or the likes, then it is not permissible to work as an accountant in it, because the work becomes assistance upon a forbidden basis. However, if the company’s main business is permissible, but some interest based dealings or financial violations occur, then the matter is lighter, and the nature of the accountants work is given consideration as it has preceded. What seems apparent - and Allah Knows best - is that the accountant who does annual account audits, or general financial reviews, or prepares accounting reports, and is not directly involved in drafting or creating usury based contracts, is not in
